


oblivion (is calling out your name)

by pprfaith



Series: Author's Favourites [29]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: All the Softness and Comfort, Alternate Universe, Always Female Stiles Stilinski, Angst, Asexual Stiles Stilinski, Attempted Non-Con Mentioned, Bathing/Washing, Broken People Healing, Dark, Female Stiles Stilinski, Good Chris Argent, Good Peter Hale, Grief, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, I wanted soft things okay, Monster of the Week, Multi, Not Beta Read, Nudity, Polyamory, Protective Chris, Protective Peter, Rule 63, Sad, Scott is a Bad Friend, Underage Stiles, injuries, post 3b, so I wrote them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-29 09:13:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16741165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pprfaith/pseuds/pprfaith
Summary: When the doorbell rings at two in the morning, Chris knows exactly who it is.Only two people ever ring his doorbell anymore and one of them only ever comes with, or after the other. Peter can’t stand leaving Stiles out in the cold, can’t stand not knowing she’s safe.





	oblivion (is calling out your name)

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted soft things so I wrote myself soft things. This is very much unbetaed and written in just 70 minutes. If you find any glaring mistakes, let me know. Otherwise, all the soft things for everyone. Because I'm trash that way.
> 
> Recommended listening for this is, same as the title [Oblivion, by Bastille](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgXOPeobPcI).

+

When the doorbell rings at two in the morning, Chris knows exactly who it is. 

He had a screaming falling out with the pack months ago, couldn’t take it anymore. He couldn’t stand watching these stupid, naïve, idiotic _children_ , too caught up in Scott’s vision of a utopian pack, throw away their lives. The lives Allison _died_ to protect. Couldn’t stand them buying into the idiotic ideals of a clueless teenager afraid to make hard decisions. 

He still stuck around, though, because _Allison died to protect them_ and he couldn’t let that go. Until, one night, a screaming match between him and the True Fucking Alpha escalated into Scott, tear-choked and full of righteous rage, shouting, “Fighting is what got her _killed_.”

And Chris fired back, “No, what got her killed is this pack,” and stormed out. He hasn’t been back since. 

Only two people ever ring his doorbell anymore and one of them only ever comes with, or after the other. Peter can’t stand leaving Stiles out in the cold, can’t stand not knowing she’s safe. 

She’s probably the only stable packbond Peter _has_ , and Chris understands the impulse. He does. Plus, Peter fixated on her, somehow, early on, when all this started and Stiles looked at him and didn’t flinch. Chris remembers her from back then, all mouth and hands, an unimportant human in a supernatural mess and still, somehow, the lynchpin of it all. Stiles has always been important to Peter and Chris has always noticed her.

Which is why he rolls out of bed, pulls on a t-shirt to go with his boxers, palms a gun and heads for the front door.

Stiles is leaning in the doorway, holding herself in the way that means bruised or broken ribs, one eye blooming spectacularly purple and hunched into herself with fading terror. 

She makes a noise, when Chris flings the door open, low and hurt and he automatically thumbs the safety back on, sticks the gun into his waistband and carefully, gingerly, hauls her into his chest, where she sags, all the fight going out of her. 

“What happened?” he asks as he shuffles her inside, checks the empty hallway, closes the door. He doesn’t lock it, knows it’s too early. Someone’s missing.

Her breath hitches and he presses a hand flat against her side, finds padding under her shirt. Bandages. She’s been to the ER then. It doesn’t really do anything to relax him. 

“Stiles,” he tries, carefully. “Stiles.”

She whimpers and tries to burrow inside of him and, for long minutes, he stands there, a broken girl in his arms, and doesn’t know what to do. 

The first time she came he almost kicked her out. The first time she came was seventeen days after – after – three days after the funeral. She came and when he opened the door, she pushed inside, a chattering whirlwind, take-out scent wafting in her wake. 

She made him eat while she collected his empties, started the dishwasher and changed the sheets on his bed. She trailed a hand along his shoulderblades every time she passed him, like he was a werewolf, like he was _pack_ , and he hated the way it uncurled something in his belly when she did. 

Then she blew back out, only to repeat the whole thing the next day and the next, until, eventually, she just brought groceries and cooked, brought shitty DVDs and threw her legs in his lap to watch them, never giving him a choice. Until she started emptying out half-drained bottles in the sink instead of just clearing out the empties and putting beer and coke in his fridge, a silent plea to drink less. Until the whole apartment was spotless and Chris was eating at least one solid meal every day and the dark rings under his eyes were fading, the slightest bit. Until he was so used to her casual touches that he leaned into them, even returned them, despite knowing, from Allison, that Stiles doesn’t like to be touched. But she never minded when he did.

He let her get him used to her, let her invade his empty life, let her try and fill the shell of it, apathetic and uncaring, until the day he caught her in Alli’s room, cleaning. That day, he screamed at her to get the fuck out, to get out, because she wasn’t his daughter and he wasn’t her goddamn alcoholic of a father, needing her to save him. 

She agreed with him, voice quiet and small in the way that he understood to mean _no_ , you’re _not a hopeless case,_ and then shored herself up with fire and rage. 

“No,” she screamed right back at him, “But Alli was my friend! She was my friend and she deserves better than to have you killing yourself in her name!”

It hit dead center, the way Stiles’ barbs usually do, carefully aimed and shaped for maximum damage. It was a twist of the knife, the _only one_ that probably could have gotten through to him. And it did. 

And she knew it. “Remember her code?” she asked, still bitingly angry, scolding him like a child, and before he knew it, he rattled it off, perfect cadence and pitch, like it was a mantra he’d learned all his life. 

It came out smoother than the Argent code ever had. 

And Stiles looked at him, seventeen and alive when Allison wasn’t, seventeen and broken, and told him, softly, “Then find something, for fuck’s sake, and protect it.”

He doesn’t think she’s figured out, yet, that he picked her. 

Although, standing in his arms, letting go when she undoubtedly kept up a brave front for the pack and the hospital staff, he thinks maybe she does. Who knows, with Stiles. 

He runs through his options, comes up with one very glaring need. A shower. There are leaves and dirt and blood in her hair, caked on one temple, in her clothes. She smells of soil and sweat and terror and she won’t be able to sleep like this, not nearly as used to the smell of carnage as Chris is. 

He hopes she never will be. 

That, he thinks, is something Allison would approve of. She was Stiles’ friend, yes, but Stiles was her friend, too, in turn. She’d approve of that and, he hopes, blindly in the dark, she’d forgive him for the rest of it.

So he steers his dead daughter’s friend toward the bathroom where he sits her on the toilet lid and cups her face, briefly. “Stiles?”

She clings to his shirt with one hand, the other shielding her ribs. “Mhm? Wanna sleep.”

“I know, sweetheart, but you’re filthy.” She flinches and he files it away to puzzle and rage at later to tell her, quietly, “I know. I know. We’re going to get you cleaned up and then you can sleep, okay? It’ll be fine. I just need to fetch something from the kitchen real quick. I’ll be back.”

She blinks at him, bleary-eyed and he curses whoever decided to let her leave the hospital on her own, before she nods. 

He practically sprints for the saran wrap, getting back to her in record time to find her wrestling with her shirt, whining in pain under her breath. He dumps the wrap in the sink and helps her, pulling the shirt free over her head. She’s not wearing a bra underneath, although fading indents under her arms tell him she used to. They probably cut it off her at the hospital. 

Helping her stand, he pops her jeans, pushes them down pale, chilly thighs, taking her underwear, socks and shoes with him as he goes. 

Any other day, she’d crack a filthy joke, or just blush bright red and send him away, but all she does tonight is cling to his shoulders and sway.

Where the hell is Peter?

Her left hip is bruised vividly, from a hard fall, if he had to guess, and her ribcage is swathed in bandages. Scrapes on her knees, untreated. She probably only told the doctors the bare minimum before hauling ass out of the Beacon Memorial and coming here. Stupid girl. Brave girl. 

One hand on her side to steady her, he drops her dirty clothes into a pile and finishes his inspection of her injuries. Eye and hip bruised, knees scraped, palms too. The ribs.

He sticks two fingers under the bandages, tests how tight they are. You don’t wrap injured ribs anymore, it impacts the breathing and leads to all kinds of follow-up troubles. But ERs, in Chris’ experience, like to leave physical evidence of their work on their patients. It’s loose enough for her to breathe freely, and with the nightmares she’s probably going to have tonight in mind, he leaves it for now, grabs for the saran wrap and covers the bandages with it.

His knuckles skim her tits as he moves, her nipples pebbling, but she barely reacts, just jumps a little, completely out of it. 

“Stiles? Did they give you anything at the hospital?”

“Mhm? No. Wanted to give me painkillers. The good stuff. Don’t like it.”

It makes her feel out of control, he knows. Like the nogitsune did. 

Her spacey behavior is probably a mixture of pain and exhaustion, then. He bites at the edge of the cling wrap, then rips it off, plastering the end to her torso, then turns on the shower and strips down. 

If anyone could see him, naked in his bathroom with a seventeen-year-old injured girl, there’d be hell to pay, but Stiles doesn’t care, never really interested in skin the way most people are. God knows, Peter parades around in front of her naked more than enough, unashamed and proud. She just critiques his tan lines, admires for a moment and then goes back to whatever book she stole off Chris’ shelves that day. 

Once the shower is warm, not hot, he ushers her inside and carefully, slowly, washes her with the loofah Peter left there months ago. One arm, then the other, her chest, what he can reach, her belly and hips. Down along her front, then he turns her around, lathers up her hair and leaves it as he works her back, ass and thighs. He kneels down and taps her feet to get her to raise them, one then the other, cleans those, too. 

The battered Converse she wears are not meant to be worn in the woods and her feet are as dirty as if she’d been out barefoot. 

When he comes back up, he tries to pass her the loofah so she can wash between her legs, but she just leans back into him. “Hurts,” she mutters, holding her ribs. 

He says her name, a quiet order, because uninterested or not, there are some lines he doesn’t want to cross. Not with her so out of it. Fuck knows he’s already going to hell, but not for this. Not for her. 

Before he can say anything more, though, the fogged up shower-door opens and Peter slips in, naked, dirty and tense enough for Chris to practically smell it. 

He leans in, noses along Chris’ neck, presses a brief kiss to Stiles’ temple and then takes the loofah and gently pulls up her left knee, washing her privates without so much as a greeting. She flinches again, for a brief moment, pressing back into Chris, murmuring, “Chris and Peter, Chris and Peter,” to herself until Peter gives free her leg and turns her to help her rinse her hair. 

Once he’s done, he lets Chris have her again as he quickly, perfunctorily cleans himself. There is blood caked under his nails and in the corners of his mouth and Chris can guess why the wolf wasn’t with Stiles when she arrived. 

He was probably burying whatever hurt her in a shallow grave in the woods. 

Good.

Chris towels her off as carefully as he washed her, then wraps her in the biggest towel he owns (it was Alli’s, but he doesn’t think she’d mind), and sits on the lid of the toilet, drawing her in his lap to hold her safe as they wait for Peter. 

Peter, who followed Stiles here one day and never quite left. Peter, who Chris loved once, twenty years and a lifetime ago, who’s as familiar as he is hated, some days. Peter, who still smirks the same way as he did when they were young and stupid, only with more of an edge to it, who snaps and snarls and dreams of fire and still, somehow, remembers Chris when all his life before has faded.

Peter, who is only ever gentle with Stiles, is only ever kind with her and Chris. 

Peter, who followed Stiles here one day and didn’t have anywhere else to go. They could be bitter, broken old men together, Chris thinks, if it weren’t for the teenage girl between them, hauling them along toward something better. 

Chris is defenseless against her, so much like and unlike his baby girl at the same time and Peter adores her with a strange, silent intensity that Chris doesn’t care to examine. There is something wrong in Peter’s head and they all know it. They just don’t care. 

The wolf finishes within moments, towels dry and takes Stiles from Chris like she weighs nothing, carrying her toward Chris’ bedroom. 

There is only one other bed in this apartment, and none of them ever touch it. Not yet. Maybe not never. It’s been more than a year now and apart from the day Stiles went in there, no-one has set foot in Allison’s room.

He places Stiles in the middle, shifts her towel up under her head so her hair doesn’t soak her pillow, then wraps himself around her, utterly uncaring of the fact that they’re both naked. 

Chris rolls his eyes and grabs the knife from the nightstand long enough to cut through the wrap around Stiles’ bandages and pull it off, balling it up and throwing it away. Then he considers mentioning clothes, gives up and just slides in on Stiles’ other side. 

He can’t drain her pain the way Peter already is, but he can be between her and the door. He can make sure her thrashing, when the nightmares inevitably come, doesn’t hurt her ribs further. He can wait for her to fall asleep so Peter can tell him what went wrong this time. What the puppies’ callous disregard cost her this time.

She shifts her head onto his shoulder, draws the blankets tighter around all three of them and then gives in to the pain-drain wooziness with a sigh. 

Chris counts to a hundred before asking, softly, over her head, “What happened?”

Peter’s growl is sub-vocal, a thing more felt than heard. Stiles, proving once more that she’s impossible, doesn’t strain away from the sound, but leans into it, even in sleep. “Chris and Peter,” she slurs to herself, and then falls silent again.

“The thing killing people all over town was an incubus,” Peter provides, voice a rumble of rage. Chris suddenly understands Stiles’ flinches. “The True Moron sent them out to patrol alone to cover more ground. He sent Stiles into the preserve because it was ‘further from danger’.” Completely missing the fact that it was also further from any help. 

As usual, Scott seems to have only two modes when it comes to his supposed best friend. Either he keeps her completely out of the loop because she’s a fragile human, or he forgets about her limitations and treats her like she’s as sturdy as he is. Chris can’t decide which is worse. Both, in any case, tend to end like this, Stiles hurt and Scott nowhere to be found. 

Peter chuffs in agreement. “By the time I found out and went looking for her – “

He trails off, burying his nose in Stiles’ wet, cold hair to reassure himself of her. 

“It was on her. She was fighting like hell, managed to keep it from feeding, too.” Thank god. Thank fucking god Scott’s incompetence didn’t get their girl raped, on top of everything else she’s had to endure. 

“Is it dead?”

Peter’s growl, louder this time, is answer enough. Chris hauls him in, over Stiles’ still form, and kisses him in quiet gratitude. He didn’t want Stiles in his life, didn’t ask her to come waltzing in and give him a reason to survive another day and then another and another, but she did and now that she’s here, he can’t imagine – 

It’s good, and he knows he doesn’t deserve it, but being like this, having Peter and Stiles here, with him, alive, is so, so good. Better than he thought he’d ever get again. He doesn’t have a name for it, two old farts trapped in the memory of being in love, with a girl young enough to be their daughter caught between them, utterly entwined in them, but whatever it is, he wants to keep it. 

“I dropped her off at the hospital, then went to get rid of the mess. By the time I made my way back, she was gone. I thought the others picked her up, which is why I went to her place first, then the loft. Found them there.” Peter sneers. “They didn’t even know she was hurt. Not a single one of them knew. Not even McCall has a packbond with her. They can’t feel her at all.”

Unlike Peter, who rubs his chest every time Scott says or does something unthinkingly cruel to Stiles, and always knows when to stock up on chocolate and heating pads before even Stiles notices. Unlike Chris, who, through his own bond to the wolf, can feel the echo of her, bright and sunny and alive. 

They’re a pack of three. He thought, until now, that Stiles was Scott’s pack, too, but if he didn’t even notice her hurt….

“She’s ours, Chris,” Peter goes on, either oblivious or reading his mind. “She’s ours and Scott’s going to get her killed.”

“We can’t just take her away. She’d never forgive us.”

For all that they’re awful at it, Scott and her father are still her anchors. Her compasses. She’s terrified, Chris thinks, to find out who she is without them grounding her. What she’s capable off. Peter, he knows, is equally eager to find out exactly that. 

Chris just doesn’t want to lose any more people to this fucking town. 

He closes his eyes, shakes his head. “We’ll talk to her,” he decrees. “In the morning.”

In the morning, when the sun is up and the world doesn’t seem quite so grim. Stiles will have starfished her way over Chris to the edge of the bed and he’ll wake with his face in Peter’s neck. He’ll mouth at the skin under his lips, hazy and half-asleep, his hand finding Peter’s cock under the sheets, Peter’s finding his, and they’ll jerk each other off lazily because finally, decades too late, they have time. 

They’ll make out, sloppy and tired, beards catching, until Stiles gives up pretending sleep and nuzzles into Chris’ shoulderblade before running a hand through both their hair and announcing, “You’re gross. I’m making coffee.”

She’s stumble out of bed, squawk at her state of undress like it’s a surprise and go make coffee, nuking some of the poptarts Chris keeps just for her. 

Later, they’ll sit her down and try to convince her that this fragile human mess she glued together out of all their pieces is worth abandoning all their ghosts for. She’ll hedge and mutter and swear and show them the early admission letter she’s been hiding for weeks and Chris will relax for the first time in what feels like centuries. 

Later. In the morning. 

For now, he palms Peter’s hip, pulling him closer, their girl safe between them and all the doors locked tightly. 

It’s enough. 

+

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked it, please drop me a line. And if you have any soft fics to rec, please let me know about that, too. 
> 
> Goodnight.


End file.
